The Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m medalist and Amazfit ambassador explains why smart wearables give him invaluable training feedback.
In his quest to become one of the best distance runners in the world, Grant Fisher plans his workouts using a combination of gut instinct and technology. A top runner since his youth, the 28-year-old has developed a keen sense of what his body is capable of. However, he doesn’t rely entirely on old-school intuition. “My training is very data-driven,” he says.
So far, the approach is working. Last year, he won bronze medals in the 5000m and 10000m at the Paris Olympics before setting world indoor records in the 3000m in 7:22.91 and 5000m in 12:44.09. Additionally, she holds the American 10,000m record of 26:33.84 and has run a fast 3:48.29 for the mile.
It took years of dedicated, patient and often painful training to get to this level. When he first started promising as a teenage runner, GPS watches weren’t as common as they are today. But in recent years, it has embraced the use of smart wearables and is using them Amazfit Balance 2: and: Helio braceletin addition Helio ring while he sleeps to gauge how his body is coping with his daily training load.
“Data collection is good as a runner,” he says. “You really have to use it to make it worth it, otherwise you’re just kind of looking at numbers, at least for me.
“The first metric you get as a runner is time, or ‘how far did I run?’ The second metric you get is the distance. And from that you can figure out the pace. So these are the first things people look at.
“Then I think the next kind of metric that people start looking at is heart rate. And then I’m up to lactate. I wouldn’t advise the casual runner to prick their finger to check lactate, but at my level it’s important.”
We’re talking at his team hotel during the World Championships in Tokyo. She conducted our interview between naps and massages. Sounds like a relief, but he is in the middle of a tough week with eighth in the 5,000m and 10,000m, not quite the results he would have liked.
Still, she smiles throughout our conversation. He loves to talk about running and training and is excited for what the next few years will bring.
“My coach in high school used blood lactate training,” he explains. “So I was introduced to data-driven or science-driven learning at an early stage.
“But when I was in university and in my first professional situation, I didn’t use a lot of data. So I made a coaching change about two years ago and wanted to get back into it. I actually went back to my high school coach (Mike Scannell) and we started working together again. And so the blood lactate was driving that conversation again.”
He adds: “Working with Amazfit was great. I have been trying their products for six months now. Even in those six months, they’ve really improved their stuff. It has become much more precise, a little more elegant. Things are much better structured since those six months have passed.
“Most companies don’t iterate through products fast enough to improve. They might release a new watch or a new product in general once a year, every two years, but there seems to be a really strong desire to improve, which I like. They implement what I propose very quickly.”
Amazfit worked with marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum until his untimely death in 2024. Since then, their number of athletes has grown, including recent Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc winner Ruth Croft, 200m Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas and European 10,000m champion Yeman Crippa.
Ambitious athletes and coaches will be familiar with runners who dip their toes to measure lactate during training in order to train at an optimal pace.
Fisher is among the modern athletes who do this and admits. “I don’t like to prick my finger, but the information you provided is very useful.”
However, Fisher says that right now those numbers are a bit “tricky” because lactate is taken every two or three times. “This means you don’t really know what’s going on between them,” he explains, “so having a continuous stream of data is quite useful.”
Currently, smart wearables can’t measure blood lactate levels, but Fisher believes it will be possible one day. He draws parallels with, for example continuous glucose monitors which offer 24/7 readings via a small device that usually sits on the upper arm and has a thin wire that runs under the skin.
“I think there’s hope,” he says, of the possibility of developing a wearable device that can measure blood lactate. “It would somehow be possible. But it has to be somehow invasive. The technology is there for glucose in your hand, but it’s just not there yet for lactate.”
So what stats does Fisher use to measure his training and recovery? “It’s a combination,” he says. “If I’m doing a really specific workout where I’m trying to do a very targeted effort or I’m trying to get a certain response from my body, lactate is really accurate.
“Heart rate becomes really useful because you can combine those numbers and use them in unison. Just one metric is sometimes a little misleading or a little variable depending on the day. But if you use both, you can kind of fine-tune your efforts and really know what’s going on inside.
“Then if you couple that back with the GPS data, you get a really good sense of how hard you’re working. For example, if you are a little tired that day, you can reduce everything. Or if you’re feeling really good that day, you can add a little boost, whether it’s making the rep longer, making the rep faster, or taking shorter rests.
“One of those data points is good,” he adds, referring to lactate, heart rate and GPS, “but if three of them are similar, you’ll get really good confidence in what you’re doing.”
And when he is not nominated? “24/7 data has become more important for professional runners, and I feel like a lot of my friends who are just regular athletes are more into that now. A big part of that is sleep tracking.”
Fisher wears a Helio ring when he sleeps because he’s not a fan of sleeping with his watch on. “The ring is convenient so I can take the watch off and put the ring on and you won’t notice,” she says.
“The ring is much less intrusive and it’s all synchronized. So you take off the ring and put on the watch, and those two feed data to the app, and it seamlessly turns it on.”
He continues. “When I’m training, it’s really helpful to just see how you’re constantly pushing the limits of your body and that you’re getting yourself to the point where you’re not going to injure yourself. So you can figure out where that line is. Sometimes the data can give you an idea of when you’re struggling a little bit before you get kind of sick.”
Does Fisher do a lot of statistical analysis himself, or does he leave that to his coach?
“I watch them quite a bit, and so does my coach,” he says. “After all, it’s my body, so I’m most in tune with how I feel. It’s nice to bounce ideas and numbers off people, but there are days when I’m really tired.
“As an athlete, your instinct is always to push. So sometimes it’s nice when something catches you at the right time.”
